I’m not sure what I can add to the extensive, and often confused, media coverage of the Boston bombing, the MIT police shooting and resulting manhunt, save to extend my condolences to the victims. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out, what differentiated these events from other outbreaks of violence was the intensity of the media coverage.

What emerges is despite the full court police efforts and an extraordinary lockdown of large areas of Boston, gendarmes were unable to apprehend a not very savvy suspect (white cap in an area with surveillance cameras) who was on foot and injured. And we have the very troubling precedent of the shutdown of Boston. The closest precedent I can think of is when Manahattan was cordoned off right after 9/11.

I saw a colleague from Boston this evening, and he remarked (as many at NC have) how many aspects of the media narrative did not add up. No doubt we’ll hear an official version shortly. In the meantime, I’d very much like readers in Boston to tell us what they know. As Lambert said:

All of us can do What Does It All Mean with the best of ’em, but I do feel a little shaky on facts, and since the official interpretation does not seem to have congealed, now is our chance!

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The media coverage was obsessive and unnecessary. If we conveyed even 1% of the sympathy towards victims of the terror we have unleashed around the world, this world would be a profoundly different place. But it is a sad fact of life that “American life” is worth immeasurably more than “those people’s lives”. I’m only glad this act was not carried out by someone of Arab descent which would have unleashed another wave of hate-mongering xenophobia and Islamophobia.

Its not an “American” versus “non-American” life which is play here. The issue is the victims were near the Boston Marathon finish line. Dignitaries, minor celebrities, and the wealthy attend the race. The investigation into the Texas factory explosion will barely get a whisper on the news because the victims were working schlubs. No “important” people were at risk in Texas, in the mining disaster three years ago, or from the inner city gun violence plaguing Chicago. They just don’t go there. Considering the sociopathic nature of our elite media, the play for this story is the result of their worry about themselves.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” our President told us, this past evening.

Layman’s observation: Two brothers placed two homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon. They killed and maimed and otherwise injured close to 200 innocent people. The older brother spent a significant amount of time abroad in 2012. Obviously, he didn’t receive any “professional instruction” at a “Terrorism University,” because the one thing you do NOT do after a day of killing innocent children and other spectators in a sociopathic manner is go home afterwards and logon to Twitter and otherwise hangout and act like nothing happened; without even making a political statement, no less. Then, 72 hours later, if you’re receiving guidance from an experienced third party, you wouldn’t take a stroll over at M.I.T., kill a campus cop, hold-up a 7-11 and hijack a car. I do NOT think you’ll even find that type of instruction in “Terrorism for Dummies.” At least, not in this day and age. So, Mr. President, I don’t think it’ll take much to “get to the bottom of this.” It is what it is.

Greetings, bob swern! Here is one question I have, that has not been discussed on the MSM. What is the story from the person that was carjacked? why have we not heard from that person?
As I understand it, s/he was for about 1/2 hour and then ket go. Where was s/he let go? did they talk to each other during that time? What was said? And the biggest question—why did these two let him/her go? Why kill the MIT cop, and not this person as well?

We need to know this story. The longer is hangs there, the more suspicious this story gets.

/quote/
Once the FBI learned the identities of the two brothers today, the FBI reviewed its records and determined that in early 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.

In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.
/endquote/

That would be standard behavior for them, but a more clever and useful strategy would be to focus on the failure of the FBI and ICE to flag this guy as a potential troublemaker and leverage that to derail immigration reform.

And that would be a benefit to most of us, as the usual suspects are working to turn immigration reform into another huge plundering scheme to transfer wealth from the middle class to the elites.

As a long time resident of Watertown, I can report with complete candor that Friday was a very unusual day.

My primary impression is that in the fog of war a great deal is missed. And with all respect to those police and military personnel who spent yesterday in Watertown, hunting down one 19 year old was a relative walk in the park compared to what American soldiers face every day in their overseas assignments. And yet the confusion appears to have been overwhelming.

As of the time I write this, I do not know all the facts so I apologize if anything I am about to say is demonstrably wrong.

First. The younger suspect managed to escape from the shoot out that occurred on Dexter Ave. early Friday morning. Whatever the mitigating facts turn out to be, it does appear certain that a substantial number of police officers were on the scene and that one of the two suspects was able to get away undetected. It is hard not to believe that one or more officers may have dropped the ball in letting this happen.

Second. Relatively early on Friday morning one of our neighbors was informed by police enforcing the lock down in our neighborhood that the Cambridge 7/11 was robbed by someone other than the terrorist suspects and that it was the search for that robber (who we were told was believed to have killed the MIT police officer) that caused the terrorist suspects to flee (in the mistaken belief that they were being pursued). When I first relayed this report to a colleague, he checked it with someone who is apparently well known as a talking head and as a respected expert on counter-terrorism issues. At the time I was told this theory was complete rubbish. Later, apparently, this same source told my friend that the two events were in fact not directly related. The implication is that the high level experts were completely clueless to the reality on the ground.

Third. Our neighborhood was on lock down the entire day until 6:00 p.m. Police cars were stationed at nearby intersections in our quiet residential area and a single helicopter circled overhead for several hours. While taking an unauthorized walk around my block in mid-afternoon (I was going completely stir crazy), I came upon several dozen military-like personnel in black uniforms with machine guns and at least one armored personnel carrier, all of whom were congregated less than 150 feet from my home. They then went door to door asking each homeowner if he wanted his house to be searched. This is not an image I will not soon forget. The men who came to our door were exceedingly polite and well mannered. I had already searched our home and garage so we declined their offer to search our property. But as a neighbor observed, if an unseen member of our family had been being held at gunpoint, would they have understood this when we declined their offer to search our home? And they certainly made no effort to search the yards in our neighborhood which have many large, full and mature shrubs that could easily hide a man. (There was one dog that I saw but he was only deployed in the front yard.)

Fourth. The Franklin Street address where the suspect was finally apprehended was substantially closer to the site of the early morning shootout on Friday than our home was but was apparently outside the zone of specific focus by the some 10,000 law enforcement personnel who descended on Watertown yesterday. I wonder greatly how, despite this overwhelming police presence, it took a citizen report to identify the location of the sole terrorist suspect. This is particularly significant given the fact that it was reported that there was blood visible on the boat where the terrorist was finally found.

Fifth. Who killed the MIT police officer? It remains my understanding that it was probably not the terrorists. And yet, if this understanding is correct, the news media have said nothing that I have seen about the ongoing hunt for a cold blooded cop killer.

Beyond these disturbing images and facts, the overwhelming impression that I am left with is of an outsized inadequately coordinated response. It also appears that a great deal of yesterday’s events hinged on two things which the billions of dollars spent of para-military anti-terrorist armaments have not funded: Good luck and vigilant citizens. I worry greatly that this kind of massive and overwhelming military response could, in a different situation with more savvy terrorists, actually endanger the lives of citizens it is designed to protect.

The younger suspect got away from the shootout scene by driving his car through police lines. Given that and the darkness, I don’t think we can assume that any police mistakes were involved.

Well, maybe the police should have barricaded the street with their vehicles (probably s.o.p), but there was an intense shootout in progress, and they might not have been able to. Besides, you can still drive a car over lawns and around other cars.

As for the lockdown — 99% theater.

And it’s especially ironic that (a) they lifted the lockdown when they couldn’t find the fugitive, which is actually when you probably need it most (if at all); (b) only when the boat owner was allowed out of his house did he discover the fugitive in the boat. Seems likely that if people hadn’t been confined to their homes, the homeowner would have discovered the cut tarp lines and blood hours earlier.

While we are following the media frenzy regarding these two lunatics that killed and mamed innocents, we can also ponder the fact that U.S. drones kill 50 innocent people in Pakistan for every suspected (as in not confirmed) terrorist they hit:

I’m not from Boston, but the following section from the CBC posting “Boston parties in the streets” reflects my own sense:

Some are feeling less than jubilant tonight, however, pointing out that while law enforcement officials accomplished their goal of apprehending a suspect, the occasion is not a happy one.

DJ EL AMADO @ELAMADO73 Nothing to cheer about Boston, tragedy all around no winners…

Dan Hatab @therealdanhatab Not understanding why people are cheering for America. Congrats to Boston PD for catching the dude but we didn’t win anything to cheer about

Nancy Holohan @katsndogs No, I do not “understand why people would want to let out a cheer!” This isn’t a football game. It’s still a man’s life.

——————-
Other very scattered thoughts:

Alienated young men – in particularly Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother (whom the younger apparently tended to follow). Extreme alienation is a powerful destructive force (at root of much violence, most suicides, etc.).

The mother’s comments are worth reading: “They were set up, FBI followed them for years”….”They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me…they were telling me that he [the older, 26-y/o Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites… they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act! Never ever is this true, my sons are innocent!”

Also – I was in the Russian South Caucasus several years ago (doing ecological research), going into Dagestan and Stavropol. The war in Chechnya really evolved into something virulent and awful. Numerous terrorist attacks, spread across the region – a few, like the Beslan school incident, people here heard about, but most never made it into the Western media. Much of the region seemed under occupation, with tanks blocking all the streets into towns, ongoing low-level guerrilla war, even outside of Chechnya itself (with not a hint of this in the Western media, nor even in the Moscow papers outside of occasional articles on major terrorist incidents). Military occupation, and the concomitant sense of powerlessness and humiliation among the occupied, is at the root of most suicide bombings/terrorism. Norms generally constrain people’s actions, but I think horrendous acts of violence became normalized among some groups in the Chechen resistance. In this regard, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s involvement (at least online) with particular Chechen resistance groups may have influenced their perspectives.

Very minor comment. Some items are dropping off Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Amazon wishlist (presumably someone has purchased and sent them?). The following four books (out of 27 visible earlier today) have been eliminated:
Voice Power: Using Your Voice to Captivate, Persuade, and Command Attention
How to Play from a Fake Book (Keyboard Edition)
How to Win Friends & Influence People
Chechnya: To the Heart of a Conflict

—No, I do not “understand why people would want to let out a cheer!” This isn’t a football game. It’s still a man’s life.—-

I have to agree. Nothing worth celebrating at all about the whole affair including the death and capture of the suspects. After Connecticut, I realized nothing will every really surprise me again. It is just humankind and society warping people until some snap. Just sad all around.

I did find the overwhelming and militarized police presense fairly disturbing.

Totally agree. Disturbing response by the authorities and the public. I feel sorry for the people killed and injured, and also sad that two young men thought this act was the answer to anything. The one thing that does inspire are the acts of kindness / bravery by ordinary people on the day of the bombing.

The twin bombing was a political statement. The distance two explosions was 100-150 meters, like the distance between WTC1 and 2. And then the ricin letters, like the anthrax letters back in 2001. Most likely, that was designed by some one who had 9/11 truth in mind. The ricin letter was sent April 8, a week before this marathon bombing.

I’m not sure that it’s so much a case of mainland Americans perceiving their lives as worth more than anyone else’s on the planet – maybe with the exception of the 1%. It is not sympathy that is the disconnect, it’s a lack of insight and empathy.

Too often the accepted premise for military actions that result in “collateral damage” (similar at least to that of Boston, 9/11, Oklahoma Cit, etc) is that the victims may in fact be innocent in the strictest sense of the meaning, but war is hell, and in all righteous struggles, there is always collateral damage. A sentiment, perhaps, shared (in this context) by too many Americans in general, by too may of those in power and consecrated by popular media (the contemporary pulpit); all of which has as its underpinnings a lack of empathy by many in society and particularly in the popular media that “there but for the grace of God, go I”. Except, when it happens to one of “our own”.

When the US sends out UAVs (drones) or paramilitary assassination teams that seek to eliminate hostile terrorist leaders to prevent further violence, they are unquestionably not targeting civilians per se, but if civilians are in the vicinity and they die, then they die with the terrorists for the greater cause of peace and security Except, when it happens to one of “our own”.

So it is not surprising that a “terrorist” (organization), our “enemy” would also legitimize their actions by adopting the same political and military rational towards the citizens of their better-armed adversaries – a “justified” lack of empathy. And, not just by those “wogs over there”, but by US domestic terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh, who used such a justification for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed his own countrymen.

I have no reason to believe there is a moral or logical justification for terrorism, but for some governments, military officers and zealous agents even if it’s immoral it can be logical; and without a proactive, empathic counterpoint to this kind of logic societies and their citizens, at both sides of the logical paradigm will, alas, continue to suffer.

But, for peoples or nations that have not been on the receiving (sometimes for generations) end but, more often than not, on the giving end of this rational, empathy by its people and attention by its media for those that have, is not easily elicited; it’s only when its “one of our own” that the real tragedy is brought to light.

You are implying the drone attacks are better targeted than they are and worse, endorse the notion that they are productive. In fact, they appear to be quite successful in confirming the worst views of the US in the Muslim world and creating more enemies.

And Americans have made statements to the effect that killing children is fine, that they are probably future terrorists anyhow.

Yves, I’m definitely not saying that, I was attempting to say quite the opposite.

When I say: ‘….but if civilians are in the vicinity and they die, then they die with the terrorists for the greater cause of peace and security’

I should perhaps say: ‘….but if civilians are in the vicinity and they die, then they die with the terrorists for the “greater cause of peace and security”‘.

….that while drones are not (I hope) targeted at civilians per se, civilians are simply seen as collateral damage, and of less consequence in the context “the greater good” of killing a proximal terrorist.

Admittedly, attacking Chechnya is going to be a pain in the ass. The f-cker is after all more landlocked than Afghanistan.

Plus the Russian’s have nominal control of the place –thanks to their glorious victory in the Second (or was it Third?) Chechen War. That complicates matters.

Still, the thing has to be done. The Chechens’ must know freedom, and democracy, and what it’s like to pummeled day and night by B-52’s. Only then will they understand that pressure cooker’s are for pot roasts, not attacking Uncle Sam.

Note: Or we could fool everybody with a preemptive invasion of Indonesia. The logic is impeccable. The place has the most Muslims, does it not?

Former FBI agent Colleen Rowley has a nice piece on Neocons and their support of Chechen insurgents.

—“The bottom line is to never forget that “a poor man’s war is terrorism while a rich man’s terrorism is war” – and sometimes those lines cross for the purposes of big-power politics. War and terrorism seem to work in sync that way.”—

There’s always something to add if you think hard enough. Funny how not having a TV erases 98% of reality. I am aware there is a palEs action up on Boston, but that’s about it. Otherwize it’s cloudy and raining and light enough now to look up out da window see tree branches against the sky. That’s the news here on the Reality Ranch.

The media narrative never adds up about almost anything except professional sports. It’s a Roshomon World.

I don’t feel good about any of this. What’s interesting is that as I write this, I wonder if I will actually submit it–maybe I should just keep my doubts to myself?

Why are these two suspects? There are pictures of them in the crowd, but have any pictures of their putting the backpacks in place been released? Do any exist? Once they were identified, why not show them committing the act? Can it be demonstrated?

When I look at the pictures of them with their backpacks on, before the blasts, the packs don’t look heavy or “rounded” as I would expect if they were carrying pressure pots loaded with bb’s and nails and gunpowder. The younger one has his slung casually over one shoulder. I have carried heavy backpacks before, and they sag at the bottom and are “tighter” at the top. Carrying a heavy backpack over one shoulder causes one to lean to the opposite direction for balance, especially for a skinny person like the younger. He does not look like he is compensating in that way.

The FBI “knew” the family and has admitted to having interviewed at least the older brother previously. They found nothing untoward. Why not go there immediately? They had gone home after the incident. Presumably the evidence would have been found, they would have been apprehended and Boston would have been spared Friday’s theater. What, exactly, is the definition of “patsy?”

The shootout in Watertown seems odd. Tossing “IED’s” out of the car-jacked car and the older brother wearing a “suicide vest.” Can anyone say buzzwords? Nothing exploded, not even the suicide vest when he was shot multiple times and run over by a car. So, they went home, loaded up on more explosives and then stole a car with a person in it? Where is that victim? What does he have to say about how heavily armed they were? Shouldn’t evidence of all this firepower have been found at their home? Nothing has been said about what was or was not found there.

Per BostonScrod above: 10,000 law enforcement personnel. The younger brother was seriously wounded and bleeding. He ditches the car close to the area of the shootout, walks to a boat and crawls in, bleeding all the way. Out of 10,000 cops, not ONE notices and follows a blood trail from the car to the boat? The Keystone Kops could have figured this out. They have a flurry of activity here and then there leading breathless and gullible media hordes around like they were on a scavenger hunt?? And all the while “professionals” are being interviewed talking about “terrorist training” and Chechnya and Russia? WTF? This is a 19-year-old kid who grew up (as far as he got) in the US!

Psychologists have said that impressions formed during the first hours of a trauma like this are difficult if not impossible to dislodge, even if they are proven completely incorrect. Perhaps that’s what Friday was about. Keep in mind, in the interest of “public safety,” the suspect was NOT mirandized. Hmmm.

This past Tuesday, the Ken Burns documentary on the Central Park Five (remember them?) aired on PBS. Long story short: they were filthy, wilding animals with no respect for human life, there was no evidence other than sensationalist media coverage and conventional wisdom, they were convicted, everyone KNEW they were guilty because the cops and the lawyers and the courts and the papers said so, they did their time. The system worked. Except, THEY DIDN’T DO IT.

+1000! Why has everyone just swallowed “the story” whole with no questions? Boy, trial by media sure is effective. So far as I can tell after reading dozens of articles, the only things these guys are guilty of are wearing back packs in public and being from another country.

Excellent points. Lots will come out if Tsarnaeva lives. Many questions will be answered and new questions will arise. I just don’t think that he is going to live. There is a lot of potential exposure here especially for the FBI.The points you bring out will have to be addressed if he lives.

I think the MSM has tried to put it’s approval on the area wide shut down by covering the “USA, USA” police rallies. I wonder how much was encouraged or staged with help from others. Kinda like the tearing down of the Saddam statue on “liberation day”. I’m sure some of it was sincere. Though it would not be difficult to stoke up some college dorms and get them outside and start screaming, especially on a Friday night after being locked down. No I believe the Orwellian term is now “sheltered in.”

My only question is. How many boats will be paid off from all the police over time that was incurred from the shelter in? Perhaps enough to buy one or more then Tsarnaeva was found in.

The small size of their backpacks puzzled me too. An article in the Dail Mail has a couple of photos of one bomb location – one before and one after an explosion. The before shot shows a very large package on the ground to the left of a post box. It looks far too large for the backpacks the Chechens were carrying. A large pressure cooker packed with explosive and metal would be a a noticeably heavy load. The backpack would sink down the body fully tensioning the shoulder straps.

Mailbox it was next to was not displaced ? And if you look at the after picture you can see the outline of the before picture’s package still in place. Looks more like a picture of chaos than bomb location.

Some good questions, Petridish.
The Chechen brothers didn’t actually have to carry and deliver bombs for the plot to be plausible – they only had to appear in the area carrying black backpacks, and be caught on surveillance video in order to set them up as patsies. The FBI/Spooks could (and probably did) supply their own bombs. These bombs could be hidden in a lot of ways, e.g. in trash can, or boxes, or trash bags. Even the backpack and steam-cooker details could be fabricated. All we know for certain was that there were bombs that dispersed ball bearings. I agree, the younger brother’s backpack does not look very heavy, certainly not 30 lbs in weight.
Probably the FBI or the Chechens’ handlers lured them to the area by pretense. The handlers story could have been anything – we are running a drill and we need some fake suspects to come at 2:30, or drop off some money on the sidewalk in a bag at such-and-such time. Any story would do, especially if they were paid money.
The 7-11 robbery, carjacking and shoot-out could very well be theater, since there is no video or independent non-government witnesses (except the carjacking victim). The idea of someone throwing a 30 lb. cooking pot as a bomb is completely ludicrous.
Another important element is the fact that the FBI/Spooks were running drills that day. A track coach from University of Mobile said that early in the morning loudspeakers mentioned the drill, and that there was a huge number of security personnel and dogs. At least two private security guards from Craft International are ID’d on tape right where one of the bombs went off. After the explosion there were at least 5 Craft guards at the scene.
Either the drill was taken live (i.e. a real bomb substituted for a fake one), or else the drill scenario made the real security guys ignore possible bombs and suspects.

My own hypothesis is that whoever planned this thing wanted to blame the right-wing Patriot gun nuts (since we have a coincidence of Patriots Day, Tax Day, and gathering of Sandy Hook victims’ families). But for some reason this plan didn’t work out, so they went to scenario B and blamed the Chechen brothers. The government doesn’t really care who the perpetrators are, as long as they are terrorists.

Even if he survives the false flag is not ruled out. The official narrative is already being solidified. The evidence will be massaged/manufactured to fit and parroted by the compliant media. The bureaucracy will coalesce around this narrative and defend it. Anyone who questions it will be marginalized. That is how these things work. The legitimate govt. bureaucracy and the national media apparat who had nothing to do with it will do the work of defending the narrative.

Sorry for the requirement to point this out, folks, but until we get to the bottom on 911, ANY activity like this must pass through the “false flag” filter. IMHO this one has lots of unanswered questions, and we sure as hell don’t need this psedo “martial law”.

Yeah, Petri, you are justifiably puzzled and you are not alone. I am NOT into conspiracies or “false flag” operations or anything like that and as far as I’m concerned Alex Jones is something of a fool. Yet, there are some very troubling questions about this whole matter that need to be resolved.

First of all it was reported that surveillance footage showed someone leaving a backpack at the scene of the second explosion. Yet NONE of the images we’ve seen so far shows anything like that. If no such images exist, then on WHAT basis were the Chechen brothers identified as THE suspects, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

As far as I’ve been able to tell, not one image of either of these brothers shows them clearly without their backpacks. In some cases it’s impossible to tell due to the angle, but if neither was seen dropping anything off, and neither was seen clearly NOT carrying a backpack after the explosion, then on what basis were they ID’d?

The younger brother is carrying a light colored backpack and yet all the descriptions of the backpacks that carried the explosives refer to dark color(s).

Their behavior after being identified certainly makes them look suspicious, but I’m sorry, there are still some very serious questions that must be answered.

“The man identified as Suspect 2 was seen setting down a backpack at the site of the second explosion “within minutes” of the blasts…”

“Other footage, still unreleased…”

“FBI had chosen not to release it, according to the official. One reason, according to the official, is that were the media to repeatedly show the suspects leaving the bomb, it might cause some people to overreact if they came into contact with them.”

The sad truth is we can’t exactly condemn even acts such as this as terrorist because we lack the high ground of real democracy in foreign policy. Such attacks are criminal and we need to stop them. Yet we also see the likes of John Yates condemning protesting Bahrainis as criminals weeks after leaving his senior post at Scotland Yard. I probably taught some of these ‘criminals’ – their motivation concerns abuse by local leaders we keep in power and varies from wanting a better life to sectarian hatred and west-hating Jihad.
We have to hope this form of public outrage and killing doesn’t get as sophisticated as the IRA. One of the main blocks to resolution in the Irish cause was British propaganda that they (mainly Catholics) had nothing to complain about. This very distinctly was not true, but is the way we now treat the Middle East. Given our own problems with criminal financial services, austerity threats and kids searching bins for food in the once cradle of democracy (Greece), there isn’t much we can say about ballot-box solutions.
I hang my head in shame and weep for the Boston victims, but the real issue is the failure of democracy.

To my way of thinking, the real issue is that the government can’t protect you/us/the population from attacks like the one that occcurred here. But they apparently can summon 10,000 police officers to a city to make it look like they’re protecting us somehow as they muddle through the aftermath of a tragedy. If you think this was anything but a muddle, I’d like to know what you think it was. Do you know how many officers 10,000 are?

A cult of muddled competitors seeking to impress upon each other most forcefully their adoption of the ritual SWAT physical posture, automatic weapon raised above shoulder level attending to the radio dimension.

‘Script lost’ and looking for something to marginalize when the command filters down.

‘Command’ needs to tell us where the SUV was found after he ditched it and what they ‘commanded’ in response to it.

One for the self loathing files: I was thoroughly entertained by all of this yesterday – the instant live updates, the commentary, the stupid political sniping from various people, the story of the brothers and all the ridiculous and completely irrelevant stuff about them, “oh look, instant view of the boat he’s hiding under! Aint technology amazing?” etc, etc, etc…

Some random notes on the bombing: First, criminals who pull off a high stakes heist involving stealing huge amounts of money employ stealth with the intention of avoiding capture. So indeed during a heist a criminal wearing ostentatious clothing that ultimately leads to his capture could be considered stupid.

Terrorism, especially an open attack in a public space, is a totally different kettle of fish. There is little to no expectation of “getting away with it” for very long. That’s because the “getting away with it” part adds too many complications to the planning. In non-Western situations this is obvious because most attacks are suicide, making getaway planning as easy as a direct trip to 72 hot little nymphomaniac virgins. Terrorists who have grown up in modern Western societies tend not to be down with the direct suicide trip but they do realize their target cities have surveillance cameras everywhere. So obviously the terrorists will be photographed before and after the act. The Brothers Tsarnaev hats (one black on the older more ideological brother, one white on the younger, more innocent brother) were most likely symbolic. The colors obviously work in American symbolism (white hat, black hat) and white is also the color of purity in Islam, while black is the color of mourning and modesty. The Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) was also said to always wear a combination of white and black headgear.

Watching the spectacle from afar I was struck how most commentators where hoping the perps would be their political enemies so they could politically profit from the disaster. David Sirota went so far as to write an article in Slate openly hoping it would be a “White American”. Of course being a white (Jewish) American himself he really didn’t mean hipster, elite, Jewish, urban, or bourgeois white American like the kind he hangs with. No, he meant “the wrong kind of white people” as defined by Christian Lander in his blog “Stuff White People Like”, you know the type — working class, conservative, or Southern, etc. And this is all because of the Leftist fantasy that “white privilege” will protect white terrorists the same way it magically stops hungry white kid’s stomachs from growling as much as the empty stomachs of any other race or ethnic group’s children. But really, if we want to talk about privilege the two most overachieving, therefore privileged groups in America are Jews and Asians; gentile whites are often underrepresented in many areas of achievement, and I am not just talking about sports. But a quick look on Google gives me 1.2 million hits for “white privilege” while “Jewish privilege” nets around 11,000 hits and “Asian privilege” around 9,000.

In any case Sirota got the white part of his wish; after all you can’t get much more Caucasian than being from Chechnya. Swing and a miss on the American portion however. But all is not lost, The Brothers Tsarnaev were definitely proles so they only thing keeping them from the “the wrong kind of white people” category is their Muslim religion. It will be interesting to see where Sirota and his type spin this.

As for the lockdown, as viewed from afar, the US ruling class were able to shut down an entire American metropolitan area with little to no resistance from the population. This is probably because the locals realized it was in their interest to let the security authorities to do their job. That things took longer or didn’t go to plan is normal; fog of war applies here. Complaints can be compared with a child’s bewilderment upon discovering their parents were not all-powerful, of course the authorities were not going to have an easy time finding the guy. Historically a wealthy and powerful society like America grows soft, fat, and effeminate as its wealth increases. Over time the more tolerant, non-violent and libertine urban mores overtake the martial, disciplined, and violent rural values upon which empires are built. Eventually marsh people from the periphery, who have the same martial way of life as rural people, invade (or immigrate into) and eventually take over the society.

So in this light the events of yesterday are a bit of a toss-up. Closing down an entire city for one terrorist (albeit a bad-ass from Chechnya, the mountain people who actually defeated the Russian army in 1993) showed some weakness, but the fact that the tolerant urban elite stood down for a day and let the more violent men from the security forces do their job shows that the US is not yet ready to join the Roman Empire in the dustbin of history. On the other hand future terrorists will take note on just how easy it is to shut down a US city and may even plan multiple urban attack accordingly.

Two recent attacks have similarities to the Boston bombing. The 7/7 tube bombings in London were a failure in the theatrical sense. One of the main purposes of terrorism is to create a spectacle. For some reason in the Noughts the Islamists were obsessed with transportation targets. Hitting a tube train in a tunnel guarantees that there will not be much film of the event, although the tight confines of the tube tunnel increase the lethal potential of the bombing and with it the death toll. The Boston bombing is of a similar scale to the 7/7 bombing but they sacrificed deaths for visibility. From the terrorist point of view this was an improvement, it is far better to sacrifice a little on the death toll but in return to have hundreds of people videoing the effects of the bombing in the open air. I never saw one telephone video of the 7/7 bombing.

The other similar attack was the Mohammed Merah shooting spree in southern France a year ago. He was also a disgruntled Muslim immigrant who was radicalized overseas and came back to wreak havoc. In both cases domestic security forces had already made contact with the future terrorists but were unable to prevent the later attacks.

The political fallout of this attack is that the immigration bill, also known as the Permanent Low Salary for non-Elite American Act, will hit some rough water but will ultimately pass because otherwise all those crops in the rich farmers field will rot or something like that. Gun control was never going to happen under a Democrat so this attack will not influence that debate. Remember the Nixon / China, Obama / Social Security Cut rule; if the political elite want to take your guns away they will send a Republican President to do it.

@Working Class Nero: To try to limit “white privilege” to Highly Educated Jews is the height of mendacity. “White privilege” avails itself to all classes. White privilege shows up when you walk into a store and by the mere fact you are not black, you are not suspicious. White privilege shows up when you apply for a job and your chances shoot up because you are “Christie” and not “Laticia”. White privilege shows up when you receive lower-interest loans than you equivalent colored counterpart. To limit white privilege to those in the upper classes is to limit the logic of segregation to the upper classes. This is of course, not how it worked out. All “white” classes were happy to enforce segregation. Why is that if only the upper classes benefited?

Wow, a comment that long and only one gender microaggression is found? I’m making real progress here.

But let’s look a little deeper at what I actually said. I indeed used a fairly standard gender metaphor for a civilization growing in wealth and you turned it around to the personal and labeled it “misogynist”. This is probably because you have been culturally trained to always see the word masculine as positive and effeminate as negative. But then I go on to describe these effeminate characteristics as “more tolerant, non-violent and libertine”. Many people, and even many women would actually consider these to be, on the whole, somewhat good qualities in people (in civilizations it is a bit more complicated), and the word “misogynist” would not be the first label they would place on the speaker of these terms. Now if I had said America was turning into a country of “bitches, bimbos, and nappy headed hoes” you would have been correct in calling me misogynist (and maybe a few other things too). But “more tolerant, non-violent and libertine”? Really?

We go to the keyboard with the language we have. If you want to avoid the (alas) real negative connotations of “effeminate” there are plenty of synonyms for “empathetic” and “tender.” Nor am I sure I accept your implicit polarity, language aside.

A writer is not responsible for the baggage the reader brings to the conversation.

While its important to be aware of connotation in writing, the idea that a word’s actual meaning should be ignored, when its explained in further detail, surrender us down a dark path way you don’t want to go.

Lots of good points, especially about the visibility effect vs. higher casualties.

All of this social media and cell phone camera obsession led to some very disturbing images being circulated post-attack that I am sure any propaganda-savvy terrorist was taking note of. In particular the shots of the poor victims with blown off legs with bones sticking out are something that only a trauma team member or EMT should ever see.

And you are spot on about the immigration bill. It’s real goal is to make sure that the elites never have to worry about paying a grubby American a fair wage for any type of engineering or professional work.

The symbolism of the white hat and black hat could just be that those were the hats they grabbed off the hat shelf in their closet. I could be wrong but I don’t think they put a lot of thought into it, especially if the were concerned about surveillance.

On CBS This Morning:
In response to recent events, the 9/11 Memorial run this weekend will involve more security. Police will remove trash cans (makes sense I guess to avert copycats) and install more rooftop cameras. I wonder if the cameras will stay after the race.

Prior to that announcements an “expert” on flight safety said more security measures will be implemented at the airports but will be the responsibility of the citizens who probably won’t mind.

So tired of surveillance state. Afraid to fart in the woods these days, might get caught on thermal camera….

Locking down all of Boston to pursue one perpetrator on foot in Watertown seems very extreme. It also sends a bad message to future perpetrators of this kind. Since people like this often act to overcome a sense of failure and powerlessness, and give themselves a sense of importance, the more dramatic and comprehensive the the public response, the more they succeed.

On the other hand, until law enforcement was able to get inside the Cambridge apartment to convince themselves that this was just a limited and amateur two-man operation, I suppose you could make some kind of case for erring on the side of extreme caution.

Two people at my workplace were in Boston on Monday. One was right at the site of the second explosion, but left ten minutes before it happened. The other was standing somewhere midway between the two explosion sites when the bombs went off. The intense media coverage combined with a social media accelerant turned out to produce, from my point of view, a wildfire of hysteria.

FWIW, I’d like to point out that there seems to be no manhunt for the folks that killed 12 people (3x the number these kid terrorists got with their homemade IEDs that mostly didn’t work and their easily obtained firearms) and blew up a big chunk of a Texas town by doing a really reckless job running a fertilizer plant. Not so much media attention, either, in comparison.

My points about Boston are as follows:

1. In spite of the overwhelming show of force, it seems no innocent bystanders were shot. NY and LA can’t brag about that recently in the Empire State shootings or the Chris Dorner incidents.

2. They had broken the perimeter and the Governor was admitting defeat in the search before the boat owner spotted the suspect. Plus the suspect managed to get outside the perimeter, anyway. This despite being injured and bleeding.

3. I feel like precedent was set during the blizzard in February. Again, was city shut down. Threats to arrest people who dared to go out during the storm. Lots of self-congratulations after that episode, too.

4. I suspect the decision to shut public transport related to the timing that unfolded. They didn’t shut it down on the day of the attacks so they could allow people out of the city. In this case, they prevented them from getting in.

Mayor Bloomberg and Police Chief Kelly seized on opportunities with abandon, e.g., Sandy, and 2 previous storms. The irony is that it was Mayor Bloomberg’s incompetence as a City manager — no preparation, no orchestrated compliance exercises — which led to a shut down of New York City by a snow blizzard.

Under The Sachs Conjecture*, would we expect big operations like locking down whole cities to be competently run? I don’t think so. Is there literature on the effects of sociopaths in positions of command? Of course, “there’s a lot a ruin in a nation” so the effects may take awhile to show up.

Yea, people in MA tell me it’s the 3rd time in recent years there’s been shutdowns there (twice for storms, one was Sandy) and commented “it’s not good and it’s only going to get worse”. Which seemed to me a truly dreadful thing. Why worse? I don’t know. With climate change more storms, ok I get that. But more of these type of things too? Dread …. that’s what I feel for the future.

Huffpo had the same major sidebar piece along with coffee&donut pic. Free ads, not bad. I forwarded it friends as an ongoing joke. Those cops worked without sleep for days, their eyes glazed like donuts. You know. Comic relief. But another darker thought emerged. Consistent with the zip code conspiracy, is the infrastructure of the emerging GARRISON STATE being rolled out before our eyes with the opening of every dunkin, every starbucks, in order to feed the army of boots on the ground at every corner and by way in America? None dare call it conspiracy, unless you post on the internet.

I have 6 Tim Hortons within a 4 mile line near where I live, 3 of them within a mile-sided roughly equilateral triangle of each other, and I’m in the boonies south of Buffalo. (Google map search: tim hortons hamburg ny) And that doesn’t even figure in all the Dunkin Donuts or other places. Donut availability: High.

a gendarme would turn his Gallic nose up at sugared deep fried dough soaked till it’s limp in brown hyper-caffeinnated waste water. They would call this food only in America. In France they wouldn’t feed it to horses. And if they did, the horses would refuse.

But not me. I’d belly up and order one cinnamon doughnut with a medium coffee. That’s the standard order when I’m at the beach, then I pop onto the wireless and start surfing macroeconomics articles.

I can only imagine if the internet followed General George A. Custer around the western territories or plunked itself down in Dodge City Kansas in the late 1860s. Oh my, would history have been different.

Even more disturbing than the lockdown of Watertown, MSNBC and CNN are reporting this morning that “Suspect in custody will not be read his Miranda rights. Government cites public safety exception.”

Did we do that for Tim McVeigh? How about the Unabomber? How about the abortion clinic terrorists? More recently, the Spokane bomber who was foiled. Were they read their rights? Of course they were – they’re all either in jail or dead at the hands of the state.

We have fallen very far, I think, in our paranoia about All Things Terrorist. And not a single person even brings this up. It’s become totally accepted to just bundle everyone off to a Black Site, while the rest of America cheers.

Summarizing several comments: 10,000 cops, pervasive surveillance and a 19-year-old amateur leaving a blood trail, whose face is plastered all over.the Internet, escapes the perimeter on foot, and is only found by some random guy after the end of the curfew.

The obvious answer is that our system worked — USA, USA! — except we need even more surveillance and more cops. Plus maybe longer curfews.

Yes – not only was a city shutdown for 23 hours so 10,000 local, state and federal authorities could hunt for one 19 year old, but all of that show of force didn’t really work. The suspect was found by a resident after the lockdown was lifted.
In fact, the suspect had only traveled a few hundred feet from where he had last been seen. So tanks and snipers and door to door searches, etc. yielded nothing.
How does that make us feel?

As Rupert Murdoch’s twitter feed seems to confirm, most of the bad info along the way about suspects, 7-11 robberies, bombs, ambushes, etc. appear to have come directly from law enforcement sources. This is not uncommon – police officers often want latitude with probable cause – cops have a long history of stretching the truth to create “probable cause”. It seems likely that this is at least part of the reason behind the law enforcement leaks – to get more law enforcement authority to extend probable cause. The result – an entire city in lockdown and a massive display of force, which produced nothing, on its own. A reasonable argument could be made that this suspect would have been found hours earlier if the area had not been in lockdown.

I am also troubled by the fact that basically every single person that came in contact with Jahar (suspect #2) liked him a lot and have trouble believing he could have done it. It really doesn’t match up with the law enforcement narrative for who these terrorists are supposed to be.

Yes, we live in a world where “Rupert Murdoch’s twitter feed seems to confirm…” isn’t met with hysterical laughtter. I’m not being ironic or sarcastic; it’s entirely rational to trust Rupert Murdoch more than a police spokesman. Sad but true!

The MSM coverage of this public lynching made me physically ill. There must have been hundreds of police and military personnel, dozens upon dozens of police cars and military vehicles, probably thousands of assault rifles and handguns being carried around that little town, and all to chase down a stupid, stupid, stupid 19-year-old. Are. You. Kidding. Me. A colossal spectacle worthy of the best Roman gladiator events. A feast of excessive force, wasn’t it? Congratulations, America. Your devolution into the absurd is now complete.

Yes, the coliseum atmosphere with fist pumps, flags, and ‘USA!, USA!, USA!’ chants were more disturbing to me than the imperial storm-trooper lockdown (replete with obese donut addicts). Watertown was thus the perfect endorsement of police-state tactics as a dry run for Shock Doctrine martial law after the next bailout or TPP protest. This was a circus-sans-bread sporting event, and the gullible sheeple fall right in line without a spark of awareness.

This is a horrific, sickening omen for our future, even more so than McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Liz Cheney’s immediate calls for (post-torture) lynching. Sickening. Far from glee and elation, it gave me the same sense of dread I got from Bush and his bullhorn. As someone else asked, “when do we attack Chechnya (assuming they have the resources we want)?”

“the Orwellian hate celebration” as a ‘public celebration of self-loathing’ where the chanters, being systematically deprived of the middle class lifestyle, job prospects diminishing by the day, cheer those conditions and view its projection into the future as ‘just’.

Another thought – police accounts say that there was an exchange of gunfire at the location where suspect #2 was found. Other reports say the suspect lost a lot of blood and was pretty much incoherent at the hospital as a result of his injuries. What are the odds that this guy was in any condition to be shooting at the police? Any chance that the gunfire exchange was actually friendly fire?

There are now reports that the suspects didn’t rob the 7-11 and may not have been involved with the killing of the MIT police officer. Given the agitated state of the law enforcement, it doesn’t seem like a stretch that some portion of the gunshots in the earlier gunfight, as well as the supposed gunshots at the place of capture, may have been from police officers rather than the suspect.

It may be telling to see what the suspect is charged with – will he be implicated in the shooting of the police officers or just the bombing?

Good point on friendly fire, since co-ordination on this seems to have been minimal. Also, I’m wondering if we’re seeing High Speed Pursuit Syndrome on a mass scale? (Arguing against that, I was listening to the Watertown police scanner when they actually caught the second suspect (it took about 5 minutes to reach the twitter) an the voices were very, very calm. Strange. But maybe dispatchers are that way.)

I prefer cock-up to conspiracy most of the time when cops are involved. The mother didn’t sound credible on RT, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find these lads were being followed in the hope of something further up the chain. We followed some major IRA principals in London and lost them before bombs went off (both in side streets without injuries). I fancy something similar in Boston. If they were being followed it seems to make sense to stop and search – but this kills the whole operation if they have a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches when you look. I doubt this operation is the ‘success’ being claimed.

Classic “event” from the Guy Debord “Society of the Spectacle” playbook…and the introduction of “social media” as an adjunct to 24/7 cable “news” hysteria only solidifies much of Debord’s thesis: “The spectacle is not a collection of images,” [Debord write] “rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.

The spectacle is extremely seductive; it didn’t even occur to me to ask for “ground truth” posts (and I have Boston readers) until after the event was over. I was too busy processing the media feeds. Yikes!

As a comparison, it’s a bit of a case of apples of oranges, but interesting nonetheless. Back when Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau shut down Montreal, the government of the day declared full out war measures. The law (sort of)defined the status of citizens and state actors. Nasty, but at least everyone knew where the government stood. They ended up arresting hundreds of people as a result. As far as I know, current US laws and norms of political behaviour are completely different. But are they more or less draconian than Canada’s war measures act, I wonder?

I didn’t watch much coverage of the Boston affair, but I did see that it was an across-the-board mobilization. Judging from patches and vests, every law enforcement agency seems to have been involved in the shutdown, along with military officials/soldiers. Kinda scary given the famous reticence of disparate agencies to cooperate effectively. If the lockdown had gone the distance, it could very well have been much worse than it was in Montreal of 1970.

It always helps me to think about who benefited from a situation….. are we being desensitized for govenments to do what they want and take over when and where they please with no citizen outcry… i.e. overhomeland security whose budget is HUGE and never touched (look at that arsenal on Boston streets); send drones to hunt down and kill U.S. citizens (the young man was a citizen right?)without due process…to me it all smacks of George Orwells 1984…..with this and the economic rape of citizens since 2008, maybe citizens will someday begin to realize as in 1984 they need to protect themselves with the assistance of trustworthy friends…

Maybe the only reason they didn’t send drones out in Boston was because the drones would have recorded the actual events, like the 7-11 robery, the car jacking, the IEDs, the cop who was killed, the naked accomplice, and the escape of the other kid. Can’t have that.

Sorry for the double post. This was just reported by DEKA news: The Tsarnaev brothers were double agents who decoyed US into terror trap DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis April 20, 2013, 4:39 PM (GMT+02:00) Tags: Boston bombing attack Caucasus Saudi Arabia Terrorism FBI Intelligence TTamerlan Tsarnaev killed. His brother Dzhokhar captured
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev won the dubious distinction of being the first terrorist operatives to import al Qaeda terror to the United States through a route outside the Middle East – the Caucasus. debkafile: The pair were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which spread across the Russian Caucasian, with the help of certain Saudi financial institutions. Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went over secretly to the radical Islamist networks.

The US doesn’t hire Chechens to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks, the US hires them to fight in the Wahhabbi jihadist networks in inter alia Syria and Russia.

Sibel Edmonds makes the crucial point that Chechen terrorists are наш. Nosh. Here in the US Timur had squadrons of handlers, chiefly trusty NATO Turks, handing him off in relays. They got him prinked up for the big show like he’s Tay-Tay. Poor bastard didn’t even know it was show time. Lil brother doesn’t know shit – good thing, too, because you don’t want him ratting out Ken Adelman.

Here’s the Sibel Edmonds link. [UPDATE I need to throw a flag on myself for CT. I’m reliably informed by one of my goto CT people that a comment I found interesting has been debunked. I’d like to think that’s because The Spectacle is especially virulent this time, so avoid ego damage….]

A child of six can debunk that nonsense. I Googled for the text, clicked through to the link [washes hands] and found this:

The Tsarnaevs’ recruitment by US intelligence as penetration agents against terrorist networks in southern Russia explains some otherwise baffling features of the event:
1. An elite American college in Cambridge admitted younger brother Dzhokhar and granted him a $2,500 scholarship, without subjecting him to the exceptionally stiff standard conditions of admission. This may be explained by his olde

Ha. The scholarship was from the city of Cambridge, not an “elite university.” So, no admission. Please don’t post disinformation at NC. Thank you.

And, here are the usual suspects calling for the suspect to be Gitmo-ized:

Graham, McCain: Hold Boston suspect as enemy combatant
Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Rep. Peter King joined them in arguing against a criminal trial for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Kelly Ayotte and Rep. Peter King argued against trying Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a criminal court, instead saying that he should be held as an enemy combatant and questioned.

“It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city,” the four Republicans wrote in a joint statement. “The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans.

“The suspect, based upon his actions, clearly is a good candidate for enemy combatant status. We do not want this suspect to remain silent,” they wrote.

The statement continued on to praise law enforcement officials for their decision to invoke the public safety exception and not read Tsarnaev his Miranda Rights, but added that they were concerned that this is limited to 48 hours. “We should be focused on gathering intelligence from this suspect right now that can help our nation understand how this attack occurred and what may follow in the future. That should be our focus, not a future domestic criminal trial that may take years to complete,” the statement said.http://tinyurl.com/czdhnn5

” We do not want this suspect to remain silent,”.
Sounds like a push for waterboarding to me. However, the chap after all is an American citizen, and guaranteed several procedural rights under the US Constituion. By the Graham-McCain logic, anti-abortionists blowing up clinics should also be thought of as “enemy combatants”, right? The Graham-McCain formula neatly fits into the Obama “drone kill list” criterion for US citizens also, and it’s only a matter of time before somebody in America labeled a “terrorist” cum “enemy combatant” will be taken out by a drone weapon, count on it.

Au contraire, that is exactly what they DO want. Throw him in Gitmo and we never hear a peep out of him or about him other than government leaks about our hero President. His status changes from “suspect” to “detainee” which means guilty in Gitmo and also means highly classified. He would either be there forever or until a military tribunal followed orders and ruled him guilty.

Who needs to bother finding out anything or covering up a conspiracy when you can simply squirrel whoever you have tagged suspects away in the dark side and make it a Federal crime to even mention their names.

ur visualization of tweets by @J_tsar, a Twitter account that has been linked to Dzhokhar, one of the alleged Boston bombers. The darker the pink, the more tweets. What it tells us, quite mundanely, is that Dzhokhar stays up late, often smokingweed, and sleeps past noon. Like so many other college students.

Now, this assumes the twitter account is correct. But I recall, somewhere in my twitter travels, a comment much like “I can’t believe somebody I smoked so much weed with would end up like this.”

Assuming the twitter account is real, and the other accounts are real, we aren’t looking at a terrorist mastermind here. From the evidence on offer, we’re looking at a rather sweet tempered college kid, which is what his teachers say.

Whoever’s constructing the official narrative on this needs to clever up, fast.

Having thought a bit more about the posted item re: Graham-McCain and “enemy combatant”, one can also read between the lines and conclude that the business about “…we do not want this suspect to remain silent…” is really to silence him by placing him in the familiar legal limbo of “enemy combatant” status, where any embarrassing or compromising information being divulged that could implicate US security agencies can be hidden from public scrutiny. Let’s see how fast Dzhokhar Tsarnaev gets a lawyer, and what that lawyer is permitted to say publicly. Stay tuned, tin-foil chapeau at the ready!

There’s a lot of photos of him at either thesun or thestar newspapers, boxing with no shirt and the like. The ears, nose and body hair match, so I’d say it’s definitely him.
Strangely, the police narrative says that at one point he tried to throw a bomb at the police but that the bomb blew up in his hand. But his hands look fine in the photo. If something doesn’t fit the official story, ignore it, I guess.

I’ve also wondered at the use of flashbangs on him at the end, in the boat; first, you could maybe kill him with that, in an enclosed space like a boat, or make his brains mush; and 2nd…… if they really thought he was wearing a bomb, or had some with him, tossing an explosive in there with him? How stupid is that?

Having seen what poorly hunted deer and elk fetch up as, after hours of bleeding from gunshots, I have difficulty believing the kid in the boat presented any threat… and will be surprised if he survives.

The uncle’s caustic sentiments do serve as a possible pointer towards what could have made the kids that messed up.

Reports on this incident indicate that on Boston there was a LOCKDOWN. Lockdown has been in the Elite Lexicon for some time along with Bailout, Enhanced Interrogation, etc. The Elite generates and controls the language.

In this case, I hope the alternative/contrarian reporting community will explore just the use of this word, Lockdown, and what it exactly means.

I will make a brief attempt to do so.

Lockdown implies that a geographic area was shut down. As expressed in one of the comments here: “As for the lockdown, as viewed from afar, the US ruling class were able to shut down an entire American metropolitan area with little to no resistance from the population.” Photos I have seen indicate highways, for instance, were empty.

So, does this mean, that no one other than officials on the streets moved about Boston? This would seem completely ludicrous to me. First of all, the police and officials themselves have to get to work. Then all the basic city infrastructure systems must be maintained. Power, water, fire, normal police, health, etc. So, was all that infrastructure also lockedown or did the people involved in those services move about? If they did move about what identification was acceptable for them to do so?

Then there is the matter of the Elite moving about during a lockdown. Boston is a major financial center amongst other things. So, did all the financial folk just stay home and locked in? What about maintaining all those computers managing those profitable derivatives? What about trading? What about other members of the Elite just wanting to move about or get out of town?

So, I doubt there was a real Lockdown. There was one for you and me but for the Elite there must be some method of avoiding the inconvenience and cost of a Lockdown.

My conclusion would be that there is, at the very least, a Two Tier Lockdown system in which the Elite and their minions are able to move about as they desire. How sophisticated such a system is I do not know. But there has certainly been such a need for the Elite to bypass normal security at airports so that may be the model for managing a Two Tier Lockdown.

Right wing blogs blame evil terrorist organizations.
But do readers of this blog rationalize a complex and sensitive reality by also playing a different blame game, placing too much weight on vague notions?
What would an unbiased psychologist observe when reading the comments above?:
Trauma? paranoia? self-blame? confirmation bias? fantasy?

Summarizing a few of the points made in the comments above:
1. There have to be multiple conspirative angles to this horrible bombing.
a) Everybody involved, from the coroner to the president must be involved in cover up.
b) The legal system must be in limbo, silencing all witnesses who tell the truth. c) ‘They’ successfully manipulating all media outlets. (but ‘We’ can quote the Israeli website Debka, which claimed that as the events were unfolding the suspects were surely pulled out of the area by global networks – very reliable).
2. We are better off without those horrible policemen and military people. Surely, our society would run more smoothly and nobody would resort to violence if we just policed ourselves and investigated crime and bombings with no institutional involved. And why 10,000 security people if you can use only a 100 to contain the problem?
3. Drones and interrogations are horrible by definition, no matter what the circumstances are and what the risks are. Ticking bombs? There is no such thing. No right/left/religious/fanatic cells in the US. And certainly nobody in the world plotting to kill civilians and/or destroy the economic interests that allow for my/your standard of living, miserable as it may be.

We have a lot to change and improve as far as our government, policies, ‘elite’, social unity etc. are concerned, but can’t we do it without projecting unsubstantiated notions on others while blaming them for doing the same thing themselves?

I live in Cambridge Ma about 1000 yards from the location of the MIT murder.

That’s not what I’m posting about.

I’ve posted my experience Monday other places and it has been deleted repeatly.

I’m not buying a lot of what is coming out of the media. Let’s put it this way. Copley is on the Green Line. I had work in Newton Center. There was no Copley stop. The train sailed right by it.
Anyhow, I was on the Green Line when the “explosion” happened.I was in Kenmore , just pulling in. I had been in the train ahead of the one I was on but I got off at the Fenway stop to try and catch a bus to Cambridge because the train was packed. I couldn’t get across the Marathon route so I got back on the next train.

Here’s the weird part. All trains stop for a moment before pulling into Kenmore about 50 ft up the track. I looked at my Ipod to check the time. It was 2:48. We pull into Kenmore people start trying to pack on. Then the operator says the train is going out of service. It is not usual for a train to go out of service at Kenmore. It is a turn around for trains (2 car trolleys really).People are still trying to pack on I yell at these people to “off the train it’s out of service”. No one listens so I force my way off . I try to jump on another train that is across the station because they have a double track. That one is out of service too. I ask an MBTA cop is there anymore trains and he tells me that got a call about a “bomb scare” and they are evacuating the station. I get out and power walk to my house about 2 miles away.

The messed up thing is that the media is reporting the bomb went off at 2:50 but they were evacuating before or simultaneous to that time.

I have proof of the time because of the IPod’s last played feature. I shut my Ipod off when they started making announcements because I have noise canceling headphones. I played the next song when I reached the surface. The time is recorded as 2:50 PM.

Many other strange thing have happened here lately. An “gunman” scare at MIT Feb. 23. Coincidentally Cambridge PD had started an emergency alert Twitter feed the same day.

Biological agent sensors installed on the Red Line at all stops in Cambridge (Kendall MIT specifically)

New $50 million police stations that is sandwiched between ATT , Level 3 Communications (actually attached to this building) and Verizon. These are a main hub of internet traffic coming through the Northeast.

DHS drills in Boston about every three months going on for 5 year now.

Flat screens in many many Stations spewing “see something say something” propaganda 24-7.
The propaganda in South Station is really really disgusting.

It’s entirely plausible to me that the explosion happened before 2:48, and the BPD dispatcher phones the T first (higher priority) and then sends out the tweet (lower priority).

The explosion happened at 4:09:43 race time, according to the link above. (And I recall images of a digital clock overhanging the finish line.) Any kind reader wish to translate race time into Eastern Standard?

I would also like to say this. There was no official lock-down. This martial law episode was informal. The seal of the commonwealth isn’t attached to any documents ordering a “shelter-in-place” warning. Which happens to be a warning for weather or dangerous chemicals.

One more thing. The lockdown was a big fail because the suspect was discovered as soon as the lockdown was lifted. Ostensible by a person that had the courage to finally leave his home discover the perp and alert the police.

Do you mean, what if they weren’t looking for him at all, but for something/one else? Quite. Dirty bomb? Who knows? It all begins to taste of “24”, to the point where I hear the clock ticking in my head.

Not a farce. The media merely documented and publicized law enforcement’s lack of aptitude. That’s not farce. It’s actually an important public service. It shows why the cops can’t protect us in the first instance, and how they muddle their way to a solution, if they did solve it, in the second instance. Now, if they had been acting like Inspector Clousseau, that would have been a farce.

don’t see it as counter at all. this tonywicher fella took the words right outa ma mouf. From the patsy’s p.o.v., people float in and out of his life in onesies and twosies: some are feds in mufti, some are foreign nationals, some are random friendly guys, cutouts all. one seldom acknowledges the others but it gets to feel like one big long conversation with all different people. You do somebody a little favor now and then or pick up an odd job, and everything in life works out until Oh ****.

A very close parallel to the Boston action is the attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, WA, on 17 January, 2011. Someone notified police of a “suspicious package”, and the device was disarmed before it could detonate. The bomb was in fact a “shaped charge”, i.e., IED, and was designed and sited in such a way to potentially cause maximum damage and casualties. Two months later, the FBI arrested Kevin Harpham, who was later shown to have “white supremacy” ties. He was subsequently tried in Federal court for the charge of “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. No, Harpham was not charged under any “terrorism” statutes, although his attempted act certainly had fit the Graham-McCain definition (vide supra of “enemy combatant”. As he was just an acolyte of good ol’ ‘Murkan racist ideology, his particular act of terrorism was prosecuted under a related but entirely different statute embracing “hate crime” and “use of a weapon of mass destruction” in pursuance of this crime. But with the Brothers Tsarnaev, the Feds are being pushed to incorporate “foreign ideologies” and the like to portray the two as “foot soldiers” under the aegis or influence of “international terrorism” and “non-state actors”, viz. “enemy combatant”. It will be most interesting to see how Dr Drone, Holder, and the DOJ run with this, as they can certainly try to make the case that “those people” are still “out there”, and “we must continue to maintain vigilance” (and further surrender of civil liberties) in order to “defeat” those who “hate us for our freedoms”.

Is the FBI going to be able to warn (and do nothing) about the next epidemic of mortgage fraud? Why don’t we refer to fraud and austerity as terrorism, in addition to the sensationalized Jerry Bruckheimer versions? War criminals of the greatest foreign policy blunder in this country’s history are still on the loose and they’ll lie us into another goddamn war, they had a huge week in middle east arms sales.

Things may have changed a lot since I worked in law enforcement, but based on my experience, I would not expect the FBI to be able to warn you of much of anything. Also, in the unlikely event that they do warn you of something, they likely got information some other agency or police department that acutally developed it, and passed the information on without crediting the source.

Here’s something bizarre.
Go to the sandyhookhoax blogspot and look at the post, “Sandy Hook crisis actors at boston marathon.”
There are two photos. One shows three Craft Int’l mercenary/security guys just after the explosion. The other one shows three Sandy Hook cops being interviewed.
The three guys in each are identical, as far as I can tell.
How is this possible?
Were the three guys hired by Craft after Sandy Hook? Or are these guys FBI/Creeps employees who move from job to job? Or are they crisis actors hired by the FBI to play a role?

I’ve been a MA resident most of my life and have lived in the suburbs as well as in and around Boston. I deeply resent this lockdown, official or not. I take this horrific incident as a statement of the following; the government is not out to protect it’s citizens and it clearly couldn’t even if it wanted to as the Boston Bombing attests – plain as day. Instead, it is out to control it’s citizens and it uses these monstrous incidents coldly, in a calculated manner, for exactly and only for that purpose. The lockdown was a dramatization, literally something out of a low grade authority fawning torture legitimizing movie intended to frighten the sh*t out of people, to make them pliable for more authoritarian lockdown policies and susceptible to a larger pattern of government enforcement benefiting private corporations.

I am a resident of South Boston, Boston. Before that I lived in Waltham (one of the towns where residents were advised to stay inside, neighboring Watertown) and prior to that I lived in the North End, Boston. In short, I’ve been here for years, and was born in Mass.

I think the commentary here is paranoid, insensitive and a gross mischaracterization of how the police actions worked.

People seem desperate for a conspiracy. Even people in communities on “lock down” still left their homes and traveled to places of business, and ran errands. Universities own a massive amount of property in the Boylston/Kenmore/Comm Ave. area and they were the ones advising students to stay inside. Many people didn’t even realize there was a shut-down of the MBTA until they got to their commuter rail/subway/bus station and realized they couldn’t get inside or no one was coming to pick them up. There was a huge police presence in and around the city and there weren’t any major dust-ups between the police and residents. Until Friday morning no one knew the identity of the bomb suspects, and then suddenly their faces were everywhere. There is an extremely high population density in the metro-Boston area, and to increase the likeliness someone would notice this young kid, and to ensure the safety of residents in the area he was assumed to be in, they advised people to stay inside. Many people still did not. I still went to work. Even though it was a resident who reported the blood on the boat and the cut tarp, police can’t just randomly search homes without a warrant. The best they can do is a blockade, and when you have a helluva lot of people living in a small area where the houses are close together and the backyards are almost non-existent, that’s easier said than done.

I applaud the actions of the city, its first responders and all the police personnel who contributed toward the capture of this young man while not harassing residents in that process. We all still went on with our lives after Monday, but it feels much better to know that two fewer crazy people are not around planting bombs on our subways, having high-speed chases through residential neighborhoods, or causing some other kind of mayhem. I didn’t go out and start clapping or waving the flag on Boston Common, but their capture makes me feel good that our city can come together in an emergency and that we have competent first responders available to handle those emergencies.

By all means, this kid deserves a fair trial, and I hope he gets a really good lawyer. But you all make me sad. Sometimes government IS good government, and in this case, unless in the defense of this kid some other issue is brought to light, I have no reason to assume his actions after the bombing suggest he is anything other than guilty.

I just hope the media sensationalization of the past few days ends calmly, so that I won’t have to keep seeing reports of my city in terror, when what I see is people still out shopping for groceries and living life just like normal, only with sadness for the many victims of this tragedy.

I’ve made the point in a few other replies, but, yes, this was for us. Like I said at the start, the police can’t prevent crime or protect us from it, but they can sure put on a big show running around after the fact picking up the pieces.

As Jerry Spence said years ago, commenting on the O. J. Simpson case, there are many murders that no one seems to mind very much. But when prominent murders occur, and someone does mind, then the police make sure their response gets lots of fanfare. So we can feel protected, even though we’re not.

Sadly, terrorists gain what they want because of this. They want us to know the police can’t always protect us. They want us all to feel threatened. Not because they hate us for our freedom. Just because they hate us.

Or the lock down prevented the kid from hurting someone else who randomly found him. Or maybe it kept him in one place, unable to move freely amongst a non-existent crowd of people who would otherwise have been too busy getting ready for work to be on the lookout for someone they didn’t expect to be in their community. Or maybe it made the homeowner aware of his property more so than he would usually be such that he would not have noticed the blood or cut tarp otherwise. Seriously. The lock down didn’t prevent the capture of the kid. It led to it. It just didn’t lead to the police capturing him in some made-for-tv way you seem to assume it should have in order to give it any credence.

I have no idea what the MA gov website said. It wasn’t one of the websites I bothered to check that day. I was reading the local news, getting text alerts from Boston University telling me not to come to campus and to stay inside, and watching the TV news sites — all of which were reporting that officials were urging residents of certain communities to stay inside.

Comparable to Boston as a city and urban population, Northern Ireland’s Belfast City (but also London, Birmingham, Beirut, Lebanon, Madrid, etc) is perhaps one of the best examples of a city’s security officials being responsible for coordinating the government’s strategic response to domestic terrorist threats. And, to perform this duty on a daily basis, while facing the challenge of how to reduce the risk to people and communities in such a way that people could go about their daily lives freely and with confidence – in essence, support the democratic ideals of freedom and liberty. Thereby, refute one of this implicit terms of terror – to be terrified.

At no time in the history of “The Troubles”, is there an instance of Belfast’s or Northern Ireland’s citizens in general being curfewed or “locked down“, en mass.

No one should doubt the professionalism and integrity of police and security personal involved in the search for terrorists and ensuring the safety of citizens. But, taking the lead against terrorism and violence that threatens local or national security is not mutually exclusive to a citizen exercising personal or collective freedoms, no matter how invasive and threatening to a community it may seem. Within the context of all pertinent information being made available, the opportunity for citizens to exercise personal choice and responsibility with respect to those freedoms is paramount, as citizens of: Northern Ireland, London, Birmingham, Beirut, Lebanon, Madrid, etc can testify.

Gawd Skippy! In making the broader point about freedom and liberty, would you really want me to tangential raise doubts about the integrity complaint foot soldiers (who are, no doubt, generally profiled for the job) who, simply, implement the tactical machinations of strategic player? Even compliant idiots can be patriots!

They know they’re patriots (they work for the American government, and get a uniform too!), they know they’re doing a professional job (many of them went to a police college and received a shiny merit badge); they just don’t equate the two with being in any way anti-democratic when following orders.

A professional hangman is not any less professional or of doubtful integrity, simply because he performs an odious job very well.

Give it a break… as you have no footing to espouse such opinions on the validity of security apparatus machinations… so off the cuff it smacks of belief (an ignorant point of view imo).

So your inference about the security, freedom and liberty is just a segway to the diminishment of said values via the patriots lack of cognitive ability.

I used to train these retards in the day… I would never trust myself’s or anyone’s else’s (including yours) – life – with the majority of them… their in it for the bucks or glory… big man corporate cortex injected syndrome.

Espousing an opinion is all anyone can do when expressing a point of view that doesn’t rest on provable fact (and I have no way of proving the motives of the state or the security forces vis-à-vis Boston).

My declared intention was, precisely, not to “segeway” into a point about security force’s motives, but stick to the bigger picture question of democratic freedoms versus state security.

Having trained “these retards these back in the day” explains, perhaps, your sensitivity to authority figures.

I have no idea why “libertarians = corporate whores“ or what it mean in this context, and I have no idea what ‘BTW information arb negates democracy so whats you bloody point.” means.

Maybe, you should be training me?
I’ll leave our dialogue at this point.

Exactly. Poker-faced robots chained to the radio dimension. Some kind of funnel-effect where relation to others gets ‘freq’d’. Boots on the ground .. while they’re not on the ground. Less than what’s needed to keep its momentum .. in claiming YOUR middle class lifestyle.

“I used to train these retards in the day… I would never trust myself’s or anyone’s else’s (including yours) – life – with the majority of them… their in it for the bucks or glory… big man corporate cortex injected syndrome.

That’s exactly his point. He has no point. Other than trolling for the sake of trolling. You have encountered the trolling function. And note the function is highly, suspiciously reminiscent of the Retards’ Motto — that they (read you) were not sufficiently empathetic to their plight of the payscale in previous days, tides have turned .. and you’re going to be taught A Lesson. haha Too stupid.

“I think the commentary here is paranoid, insensitive and a gross mischaracterization of how the police actions worked.” You need to understand that you may be communicating with some people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job, here, at the comments section, of Naked Capitalism. The police response was not perfect and no they can’t protect us at all times, but at least they minimalized the loss of life here but that’s not going to mean anything to those who have an axe to grind with law enforcement (strange since most of them have NEVER EVER been victims of the tiered justice system they love to point out. ) or point of view that amounts to denial of the threat of terrorism.

And more disturbingly, is Boston the prototype for what can be expected for “rest of country”? I mean, is this where all those homeland security funds went? To put trigger happy fools with machine guns on city streets?

Leemeetellya, folks from outside the Northeast “thinking suppression field” *are* terrified by these events. Not so much by two punk kids with delusions of grandeur. Know of many people who refuse to set foot in NYC for fear of “Bloomberg’s army”…and now Boston is almost certainly on that list.

“Public servants” appear to have captured the government. No good will come of this.